Orders of the Day — Local Government (Scotland) [Money].

Part of the debate – in the House of Commons at on 5 December 1928.

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Photo of Mr Archibald Skelton Mr Archibald Skelton , Perth

A variety of points, due to the nature of the Resolution, ranging over a very wide field, have been brought before the Committee during the course of the Debate. A great many are points which it would be most alluring and interesting to follow up, but I want to confine myself to a comparatively small number of subjects. In the first place, an observation was made by the right hon. Member for Central Edinburgh (Mr. W. Graham) which I thought did not bear the stamp of his usual candour. He compared the figure of rating relief, taking that at a sum of £3,000,000, with the total sum exacted from Scotland in rates, and by doing so arrived at the result that out of a total of £22,000,000 Scotland was only going to get £3,000,000. He then argued that it was impossible to say that a relief so small in proportion was any real relief to productive industry. He was not comparing like with like. He should have taken the total rate at present exacted from productive industry in Scotland. That would have been a much smaller figure, something in the nature of £4,000,000, and, therefore, his figures, instead of showing a comparatively small proportion of relief, would have shown the real situation, which is that productive industry is going to be relieved to a very large extent.

I have found it somewhat difficult to follow the argument presented from both Opposition parties. While unwilling to deny that the relief of rates is a relief to industry an attempt has been made to show that this particular method of relieving rates is a poor form of relieving industry. I cannot see the force of that argument. If you look at it in a broad way then the right departments of profit making industries have been selected for relief. We must all agree that in the present condition of industry and trade it is far more important to relieve productive industry than it is to relieve distributive industry. I cannot see how that principle of the Government's method of relief, namely, to concentrate on productive industries, can be quarrelled with, because it is clear that the success of distributive industries largely depends upon the state of productive industry and, therefore, you are striking at the root of the problem if you do something to assess productive industry. On that score, the Government scheme must hold water however closely it is examined. Take the case of agriculture. When I was referring to productive industry I was thinking more of urban industries. But take the case of agriculture. I listened with the greatest interest to the hon. and gallant Member for Caithness and Sutherland (Sir A. Sinclair) on the subject of agriculture, and I am only going to deal with one small point because many of his questions were asked direct of the Government and can only be answered by those responsible for the Bill. But all the criticisms which have been made on the relief to agriculture minimise or neglect, as far as I have heard the Debate, the effect of rating relief upon the owner-occupier. The owner-occupier is a person of great and increasing agricultural importance in Scotland. I think the proportion of land now cultivated by owner-occupiers for agricultural purposes is something like 31 per cent.